[Noisebridge-discuss] Internet down

[Jonathan Lassoff]

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Encapsulated within <49A3503E.9050505 at xtreme.com> on Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 05:41:18PM -0800, Rachel McConnell <rachel at xtreme.com> wrote:
> From: Rachel McConnell <rachel at xtreme.com>
> To: Rick Wesson <rick at support-intelligence.com>
> Subject: Re: [Noisebridge-discuss] Internet down
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> 
> Why should they block port 25?  If it's spam prevention, that's the same
> theory that DRM uses: inconvenience the people who aren't trying to do
> Bad Things, while those who are trying, are able to work around it
> without all that much effort.

Actually, SMTP on TCP port 25 was never really meant for submitting mail
to be sent to be relayed to other hosts on the Internet. It was really
more of a protocol for transferring blobs of mail text from one
mail/SMTP daemon to another.
I believe the idea here was that end-users wouldn't have a stand-alone
computer just for their use - people were connecting to internetworked
hosts via a teletype or similar and composing/sending mail on the same
server that would be relaying it.

Some shops started running their mail services on these ports for
accepting mail from their users, and spam from external unauthorized
sources sorta grew from there.

However there is a proper alternative - the submission protocol. It's
pretty much the same as SMTP, only it *requires* authentication from the
client 'submitting' mail to be relayed. Since it runs on TCP port 587,
it's rarely filtered by ISPs.

Bug your ISP or mail op to run a submission service (TLS encryption on top is a
good idea while you're prodding an admin) -- you'll almost never run
into problems sending mail out from foreign 'net connections while
you're out and about.

Cheers,
jonathan

> 
> Rachel
> 
> Rick Wesson wrote:
> > It took us over 5 years to convince comcast to block port 25, I'm glad you
> > appreciate the effort.
> > 
> > I believe there is a way to open it by calling their technical support
> > 
> > -rick
> > 
> > 
> > Rachel McConnell wrote:
> >> IIRC the 'crappier' way was crappy at least in part b/c Comcast(?)
> >> blocks outgoing port 25 so you can't send email except through a web
> >> client.  Which bugged the hell out of me...
> >>
> >> Rachel
> >>
> >> Josh Myer wrote:
> >>> On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 04:53:42PM -0800, Andy Isaacson wrote:
> >>>> On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 04:47:33PM -0800, ian wrote:
> >>>>> I think we're just going to pull some ethernet into the main room and 
> >>>>> share the dsl with someone's mac. Viva la path of least resistance!
> >>>> Heh.  It should be possible to hook up a wifi router to the DSL.
> >>>> Configure it with a "noisebridge-dsl" SSID and bob's your uncle. :)
> >>>>
> >>> Can we leave it this way?  I liked the old, "crappier" network better.
> >>>
> >>> (No, really, I'm not kidding.  I appreciate the reliability of human
> >>> failover, and accept the cost in convenience and Awesome.)
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
> > 
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